John Lanchester - Capital

‘… and as for the idea that Shahid chose to waive his right to see a lawyer, this is a conscious, deliberate, open attempt to insult our intelligence. He has not just come down from the hills. He is not some Urdu-language monoglot from the tribal areas who’s never seen a knife and fork. Do they really expect us to believe that he has signed away his right to legal representation? This is a young man who was offered a place to read Physics at Cambridge University. He is lazy and he has his faults but he is not an idiot and I simply do not believe what the police are asserting in this matter.’

Fiona Strauss was not a natural listener, but she knew how to listen to a client. She sat behind the desk, her fingers arched together, frowning, her mouth pursed. On the wall to her left, there was a photograph in which she could be seen shaking hands with Nelson Mandela. Behind her was a view of Montagu Square, with the plane trees in full bloom and a light spattering of rain hitting the window in intermittent gusts. She was good at pausing: when people stopped speaking she always waited for a moment before saying anything in reply. Even the way her patterned scarf was tied seemed designed to express principled concern.

‘Shahid has been in custody for seven days now, yes? Because he is being held under the Terrorism Act, they can keep him for twenty-eight days without charge. That is a deplorable fact, but it is a fact.’

‘But he hasn’t done anything!’ said Ahmed. ‘It’s ridiculous! Shahid’s no more a terrorist than… than I am!’

‘I believe you. But that doesn’t affect the legal position.’

Everyone in the room could sense that Fiona Strauss was holding back. She was a famous human rights solicitor, and was the first name to come to mind in cases of this sort. She was so well known that Rohinka’s first thought, when she went into her large office and saw her, was that she knew her already: a side effect of her appearance being well known. It was a bit like seeing Mel Gibson in the street and waving at him because you thought he must be an old friend. They expected to have to do no more than tell her what had happened to Shahid, and the blue flame of her indignation would be lit. Then suddenly there would be action, press conferences, an interview on the steps of the police station, and Shahid’s immediate release. The wrong done was to them so flagrant that it was astonishing to find it did not automatically seem so to everyone else. But it didn’t appear to work like that. The lawyer was resisting them, was requiring to be seduced; was requiring – and this was hard to take – to be interested. She had her pick of the world’s injustices, and liked to choose carefully. The Kamal family had expected to be meeting a crusading avenger who wished for nothing more than to pick up a flaming sword of truth and wield it on their behalf, and instead found that they were having to make a sales pitch.

Ahmed began to talk about how his brother was a good boy and wouldn’t have anything to do with terrorism of any kind, about how they as a family were well aware of the virtues of Britain as a free society (Usman was shifting in his chair at this point) and how they were good citizens, a family of practising Muslims who were respectful of other faiths and other paths. The others could hear that he was rambling, in the effort to get the full attention of Fiona Strauss. When he wound down, Usman had a go. He was hunched forward and looked as if left to his own devices he would be wearing a hoodie. For reasons of his own, he roughened up his accent and deepened his voice while talking to the solicitor.

‘The thing is, we know we got rights. We supposed to have rights. So where are they? Who’s gonna help us’ – and then giving the word a flourish – ‘ exercise them?’

Usman gradually got angrier and angrier, and as he did so, made steadily less sense. It was clear that he was possessed by a furious sense of the injustice that had been done to his brother, but he was spluttering and going round in circles and his accent kept shifting from his normal educated voice to some version of South London which seemed like a new personality he was trying on specially for the occasion. Ahmed had never seen him so agitated; it was as if he had gone slightly mad.

By way of showing that she appreciated the effort they were making, and also that they had not yet succeeded, Fiona Strauss said,

‘Unfortunately, I say again, the legal position is clear.’

Mrs Kamal gathered a silence around her. Her power of projecting her mood, very often a great burden in family life, became an asset here. She said:

‘Well, this is all very good isn’t it? We are in the country which regards itself as the cradle of liberty. What happens? We are all woken at dawn with a gun stuck in our heads, in a manner which would embarrass a police state. My middle son is dragged off to jail. He is completely innocent of anything and he had never been arrested or charged with anything in his life, not once, not ever, but that doesn’t seem to matter to anyone, and he is held without any information being allowed out, without any contact with the outside world, his signature is forged to claim he is waiving his rights, and that’s it. Shahid would never waive his rights, that is the exact opposite of the kind of boy he is. But never mind. Nobody cares, nobody is willing to do anything, he’s just gone. Why not just bundle him off to Guantanamo and have done with it? That’s what you seem to be saying, Ms Strauss, am I not right?’

‘Mrs Kamal, the legal facts of the case are what they are. In relation to the judicial realities of the matter, my opinions have no status. They have no traction. Merely as a point of fact, you should know that there is not the slightest possibility of Shahid being extradited to Guantanamo Bay.’

This speech made something clear to Mrs Kamal. With her instinct for a weak point, she realised that what the lawyer was seeking was an appeal to her vanity. It wasn’t that she needed to be made to feel important, but that she needed it to be made clear that her clients understood that she was important. Everybody who came into this office was convinced that they had experienced a level of injustice without precedent, and they always thought that their story would do the work of convincing for them – that the story was all it took. So it was as if the story was the most important thing. But for Fiona Strauss, the important thing was herself, and she needed this to be acknowledged before she would take an interest in a case. Then the story could have its due. Mrs Kamal saw this, and acted on what she had seen.

‘But we need you, Ms Strauss. We are lost without you. We have rights on which we cannot act. The door is closed to us. We are excluded from justice. Without your help we don’t even know where to begin to seek it. The legal position may be as clear as you say – I am sure it is as clear as you say – but the moral position is clear also. We know that the fight against such injustices is your whole life. We know that. And all we can do now is ask for your help for us and for Shahid. He is in a dark place. You must help us bring light to him, Ms Strauss, because there’s no one else we can turn to.’

The lawyer separated her arched fingers and briefly, silently, drummed on the desk in front of her. Then she sighed, a sincere sigh, and said, ‘Very well. I will do what I can.’

‘You have no idea what this means to us,’ said Mrs Kamal, seizing her hands. The Kamal family were loud with relieved thanks, with exclamations, with gratitude and approval.

They spent another twenty minutes talking about what to do next. The lawyer promised to make representations to the police, and to explore the possibility of a press conference – exactly the thing the family had wanted all along. The Kamals left happy, except for Usman, who still seemed furious.